Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
I nod, writing as he talks. The pen scratches the paper loudly. A thought hits me, and I scribble it down. Resume?
The word makes me sigh. “I don’t have a resume.”
“You’ve done things,” he says. “Maybe not on paper. You make lists. You show up. You learn. Those count more than men in ties like to admit. Meanwhile, if you need a job to stop your brain from chewing your own tail, the shop always needs help for Pami at the front desk that isn’t scared of phones or people. I’ll warn you. It’s loud. It smells like oil. People will try to talk down to you and you’ll have to learn how to shut that shit down, even from the guys. You’ll be safe. Brothers won’t let anyone put hands on you or talk too much shit. And you’ll leave and be able to leave work at work. Occasionally, you will help Maritza at the mini storage office if she’s got to step out but it’s not often.”
My head jerks up. “Are you offering me a job?”
He shrugs, a big-shouldered, nonchalant thing that doesn’t match the size of what he’s handing me. “You don’t have to take it. There are more than a hundred other places. But if you want a place to sit where your next thing has fewer teeth to chew you up, I can give you a chair, a phone, and a stack of forms.”
A laugh breaks out of me, startling and bright. “I can handle forms.”
“I figured.” He sits back, studies me like he’s checking my pulse. Satisfied, he nods once. “Thursday morning. Nine. If you show, then I’ll put you to work. If you don’t, no one’s hunting you down to make you explain yourself.”
The ease of it, the if/then simplicity, soothes a place in me that is raw and tired of negotiating invisible tests. “I’ll show.”
“Okay.” He stands moving to the sink with his dish. He sets his empty bowl in the sink and runs water not because dishes can’t sit for ten minutes, but because his hands like doing things. Mine do too, it turns out. I stand, take the sponge, and scrub. He doesn’t stop me. He doesn’t praise me for washing a plate like I’m a child. We do the dishes like two humans who made a mess and trust each other to help clean it.
When we’re done, the house feels lighter. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s the way tasks stack inside my chest like bricks instead of boulders with Kellum.
“Tell me about your parents,” he inquires suddenly, not looking at me, which is merciful. He keeps his body angled toward the counter, as if he asked a question into a mirror as we move back to the table because we’ve finished the dishes.
“My parents?” I take a breath that tastes like dish soap and humid evening. “They were good people. Kind. We lived in Delaware. Typical suburb life. My dad taught high school history and my mom ran the library like it was the beating heart of everything. Books made her happy. Summers we drove out to the beach and ate terrible fried shrimp on paper plates and my mom would read mystery novels in a cheap plastic chair she brought from home because she said rental chairs were for people who didn’t plan. Later, I figured out it was because they charged for rental chairs and the trip to the beach took everything they saved for the entire year to get us there. The extra wasn’t worth it to her so I could have ice cream or other extra treats. They would have hated Brian if they had gotten to know him.” The truth makes me smile for the first time without that tight ache. “They would have asked him what he was reading and he would have tried to lie to sound sophisticated and they would have seen through him in ways I couldn’t.”
“When’d they go?” he asks genuinely carrying this conversation.
“Four almost five years ago. A drunk driver.” The words don’t scrape skin off the way they used to. Maybe the scar is finally blending into my heart a little. “I got the call on a Tuesday. I flew home from college. Handled things at the funeral home, and learned quickly what being an adult was like when the mortgage payment came in and I couldn’t pay it. After negotiating with the bank, the house went up for a quick sale and the little profit there was, I kept myself afloat at school. I never let myself look back.” I shrug one shoulder. “Brian liked broken things. They made him feel necessary, I think because he liked me broken.”
“People like that don’t want to fix you,” he states casually “They need you to be broken so they can manipulate the situation to their benefit.”